Amiga

Introducing a new potential franchise games character Cool Coyote. Who? Yes, he certainly took a nose-dive from the springboard of fame into the hard concrete depths of obscurity. A too cute to survive platform game of coyoties and puppies collecting pieces of keys whilst avoiding various creatures of certain danger, such as penguins and badgers. Graphically and musically great, Hell - even good playability, this game disappeared fast and, luckily, Cool Coyote never returned.

	Fantastic shooting action copying the famous walkers out of Star Wars. Take your walker for a stroll through the war-torn surroundings and blast away at lots of tiny troops and tanks to your hearts content. Graphically superb, this game was let down by the lengthy loading times across its 3 discs. It was worth the wait. Controls were a bit dodgy too - ambidextrous was the order of the day having to use the joystick to move and the mouse for your crosshair. Watch for attack by gliders!

God, this looked so good but, God, it was shit. Extremely nice graphics and sound effects were ruined by the absolutely crap control system which had your character floating around the screen firing in all directions but the one you wanted to fire in. It had the then-standard shop option for buying power-ups which you needed to be able to fire in all directions at once seeing as you didn't know which way you were facing most of the time. The shop keeper, as seen on the right, was, as usual in these games, a bit of a babe. The only saving grace of this monstrosity.

	Straight from the arcade air-hockey table to the sleazy future one-handed sport. Choose from a mix of alien inbreeds or a black-haired heavy-chested partially-clothed beauty for an opponent then try to smash their glass screen by shoving the puck across the table at them. Fast and frantic gameplay with realistic sounding effects as the puck bounces off wood almost as much as you bounce off your chair, especially when playing the aforementioned babe. Nice to control with just the mouse movements leaving one hand free for other pastimes. The babe can be a bitch though - see the pics left for a demonstration of her mystical sleight of hand - Crap! I was watching her cleavage.

Crazy ants wanting to play dominoes but then just using them to line-up and knock down. Puzzles ahoy with the Domino Express-a-like where you have to re-place dominoes in the right order for a successful chain reaction that opens the door to the next level. Dominoes come in all shapes and sizes with exploding ones, bouncing ones, firm ones and, quite possibly, silicone enhanced ones. Crazy music accompanies the crazy ants in this crazy classic.

One of the best ever point and click adventure games. Lucasarts have a great track record of good adventure games mainly due to the fact most of them are Monkey Island games. Learn to be a pirate in this hilarious story of ghostly goings-on without Scooby Doo.

The Amiga's Sonic or Mario. Lots of fun and cutesy bubbles of delight in this easy to master kiddy friendly platform romp. Pretty graphics and jaunty music enhance your viewing pleasure. Enough to make you nauseous. Prance your frog hero around with his little cape to help him float high aloft and collect those precious coins, cherries and apples while avoiding every type of garden creature possible. They're all deadly to the frog, even snails. Your only defence, apart from the red cape, is a small self-returning ball-type thing; all frogs have these, don't you watch National Geographic? Plenty of levels to race through to finally come face-to-face with the evil witch for one almighty frog vs witch showdown. Who could possibly win?

Control a team of cybernetically enhanced terminators equiped with assorted weapons from handguns to heavy artillery and run amok in futuristic cities. Assassinate people, steal vehicles, shoot things, blow things up and assassinate more people. Sounds fun? Sure is. Released when Grand Theft Auto was merely the at the thought of conception, Syndicate was the game to be in. Unfortunately, the Amiga only supported solo play; we had to wait for the Playstation One version for 4 player mayhem. Gameplay was very similar to the crop of recent squad games like Brute Force, Hidden and Dangerous and Rainbow 6 but in isometric view rather than 3rd person. You could switch between the 4 killers or move them altogether around the Bladerunneresque landscapes trying to complete your mission without losing your weapons or team members. Money earned from missions could then be spent upgrading your team with better arms and legs, or even eyes for accurate shooting. The final level of the game was one of the most difficult of any and to this day I have not yet completed it. The graphics, as you can see, were top of the league and the sound effects will haunt you forever.

Every system has its own puzzle game. For Nintendo it was Tetris, for Sega it was Columns and for the Amiga it was Lemmings. Assign different Lemmings their own tasks with the simple point and click manouever. Try to save as many as you can. If not, kill them all, the little green-haired squeeky basta.......

An all-time great 1 or 2 player shoot-em-up adventure from the famous Bitmap Brothers. Set in a Victorian sci-fi dimension, you and your CPU controlled henchman (or 2nd player) must fight through hoards of various creatures turning on the electric nodes of each level using skill, weapons and upgrades. The music is superb and spurs you on while the graphics are amongst the best you could expect from the Amiga with fantastic animation. There's not much else that can be said about this game except get it now, right now, and where's the new version for the new generation? It was destined for a GBA version a few years back but that vanished. A new first-person version could be a Halo or Half-Life 2 killer. Go directly to the emulator links page and seek out a copy of WinUAE emulator (this game doesn't work on the WinFellow emulator), get the Kickstart ROM and a copy of the game. Play.